Voters Get Last Word

Countless words--heartfelt and hired, meant to enlighten and meant to obscure--have gusted around the 15 statewide propositions on Tuesday’s ballot.

Voters soon will have the final word, putting a quick stop to the winds by quietly pushing styluses. Before they do, some questions not often posed during the long issue campaigns bear asking:

Are the propositions more than pet concerns that interest groups and ideologues have succeeded in elevating to the status of ballot questions? Do they really touch on the lives and direct interests of voters, and if so, how?

To get some indication of the answers, The Times invited seven voters to talk at length about the ballot issues and their own lives. All seven, most of whom live in the San Fernando Valley, had participated in a recent Times Poll. What they said has been condensed but remains in their own words.

The ballot measures they focused on as particularly meaningful included Proposition 205, which would provide $700 million in bonds to build and renovate county jails and juvenile detention facilities; Proposition 206, which would authorize $400 million in bonds for home and farm loans to military veterans (the Cal-Vet program); Proposition 209, which would abolish affirmative action in state and local government employment and state university admissions; Proposition 210, which would raise the minimum wage in the state to $5.75 an hour by March 1998; Propositions 214 and 216, which would provide closer government regulation of health maintenance organizations; and Proposition 215, which would legalize marijuana for medical use via doctor’s prescription.

Despite poring over the state-provided voter information pamphlet, all of those interviewed admitted to at least some confusion about what the ballot issues are truly about and blame misleading pro and con advertising.

Many also voiced resentment of the initiative process itself for their being called upon to make judgments about matters they don’t always entirely understand.

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JUDY SPENCER, 48, homemaker and mother of two who lives in Pasadena.

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One of my concerns is I feel a lot of the issues are things the legislators don’t want to deal with, and so it’s been turned over to the public. And it irritates me that we have to look at all these various issues, when I don’t feel qualified on a lot of them to make decisions. I thought that’s why we had a Legislature; that’s what they got paid for. I feel a lot of this is that they’re not doing their jobs.

I see the ads on TV and over the weekend I read the booklet, and some of the ads are misleading. You think you might be voting one way when, in fact, you might be on the opposite side. Really, if that was all I went by, I’d possibly be making a bad choice.

I don’t think a lot of people sit down--I mean, I sat down and really read over that pamphlet, and it’s thick. And I didn’t even get to reading the actual propositions. So I feel a lot of people just see the TV ads or hear the ads on radio and maybe make a decision based on that, and I think that’s really too bad.

The one I’ve been most interested in is, I guess, 209. And I keep going back and forth. I read it and the language sounds good. But then, on the other hand, I think, well, when the affirmative action legislation was written it was to correct a wrong that had been taking place, and I don’t know if it’s time yet to get rid of that. Right now I’m leaning toward voting against it. I’m pretty sure I will vote against it.

I don’t know that I can say it intersects with my life, because I’m out of the work force. I worked up until eight years ago, when I decided to stay home with my kids. I was in banking. I was an assistant vice president. That’s just a title. It doesn’t really mean anything, just that they give you a little more money.

You know, I want to see more women and I want to see more minorities in the higher-level jobs, and at the bank I only saw maybe one woman that was in senior management. And I just think having some kind of measurement and some kind of a criteria and putting that in people’s minds is good. Saying, “OK, all right, everything’s equal. We’re only going to choose that person we feel is most qualified”--well, then they get away with going back again to, you know, the good ol’ boy. I just feel it’s been unequal too long.